1. Note that Tillich's own
use of “ultimate concern” is ambiguous, sometimes
referring to the subject's psychological and existential attitudes
toward the object of his or her devotion (see, e.g., Tillich 1957,
4-5) but at others—and more typically—referring to those
attitudes qua directed toward what Tillich regards as their
appropriate object, namely, Being itself (see, e.g., Tillich 1951, 21;
1957, 9-10). In the latter sense, ultimate concern has an ontological
as well as a phenomenological dimension. I am employing the term in
its first and purely phenomenological sense, and not the second.
The suggestion that Tillich uses the term “ultimate
concern” in two senses is further documented in
Alston 1961, 12–26, and in Rowe 1968.